<h2 id="c2"><br/>CHAPTER II <br/>PATSY FROM KENTUCKY</h2>
<p>Some five miles from the old dredge Marian
stopped her reindeer, gazed about her for a
moment, then said quietly:</p>
<p>“We’ll camp here.”</p>
<p>“Here?” cried Patsy. “Won’t we freeze?”</p>
<p>“Freeze? No, we’ll be safe as a bug in a rug.
Just you sit down on a sled until I unpack this
one. After that I’ll picket out the reindeer and
get supper.”</p>
<p>From the sled Marian dragged a sheet iron
affair which she called a Yukon stove. With dry
moss, dug from beneath the snow, and wood
brought on the sled, she kindled a fire. They
had no shelter, but the glow of the fire cheered
Patsy immeasurably. When the smell of frying
bacon and warming red beans reached her she
was ready to execute a little dance of joy.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_22">[22]</div>
<p>Supper over, Marian took a small trench
shovel, salvaged by a friend from the great war,
and scraped away the snow from above the soft,
dry tundra moss. Over this cleared space she
spread a square of canvas. Then, untying a
thong about a deerskin sleeping bag, she allowed
the bag to slowly unroll itself along the canvas.</p>
<p>“There,” she announced, “the bed is made.
No need to pull down the shades. We’ll get off
our outer garments and hop right in.”</p>
<p>Patsy looked at her in astonishment. Then,
seeing her take off first her mackinaw, then her
sweater, she followed suit.</p>
<p>“Now,” said Marian as they reached the
proper stage of disrobing, “you do it like this.”</p>
<p>Sitting down upon the canvas, she thrust her
feet into the sleeping bag, then began to work
her way into it.</p>
<p>“Come on,” she directed, “we can do it best
together. It’s just big enough for two. I had it
made that way on purpose.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_23">[23]</div>
<p>Patsy dropped to the place beside her. Then
together they burrowed their way into the depths
of the bag until only their eyes and noses were
uncovered.</p>
<p>“How soft!” murmured Patsy as she wound
an arm about her cousin’s neck, then lay staring
up at the stars.</p>
<p>“How warm!” she whispered again five minutes
later.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Marian whispered, as though they
were sleeping at home and might disturb the
household by speaking aloud. “You see, this
bag is made of the long haired winter skins of
reindeer. The hair is a solid mat more than an
inch thick. The skin keeps out the wind. With
the foot and the sides of it sewed up tight, you
can’t possibly get cold, even if you sleep on the
frozen ground.”</p>
<p>“How wonderful!” exclaimed Patsy. “It
wouldn’t be a bit of use writing that to my
friends. They simply wouldn’t believe it.”</p>
<p>“No, they wouldn’t.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_24">[24]</div>
<p>For a little time, with arms twined about one
another, the cousins lay there in silence. Each,
busy with her own thoughts, was not at all
conscious of the bonds of human affection which
the vast silence of the white wilderness was even
now weaving about them. Bonds far stronger
than their arms about one another’s neck, these
were to carry them together through many a
wild and mysterious adventure.</p>
<p>As if in anticipation of all this, Patsy snuggled
a bit closer to Marian and said:</p>
<p>“I think this is going to be great!”</p>
<p>“Let’s hope so,” Marian answered.</p>
<p>“And will we really herd the reindeer?”</p>
<p>“No,” laughed Marian, “at least not any more
than we wish to. You see, we have three Eskimo
herders with us, and Attatak, a girl who cooks
for them. They do most of the work. All we
have to do is to finance the herd and sort of
supervise it.</p>
<p>“You see, the Eskimo people are really child-people.
They have had many strange customs in
the past that don’t fit now. In their old village
life of hunting and fishing, it was an unwritten
law that if one man had food and another had
none, it must be shared. That won’t work now.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_25">[25]</div>
<p>“There is only one time of year that we can
get food into this herding ground; that is summer.
We freight it up the river and store it for
winter’s use. That gives us a big supply of
provisions in the fall. There are two Eskimo
villages thirty miles away. If there were no
white people about, our good-hearted herders
would share our supplies with the villagers as
often as they came around. Before the winter
was half through they would be out of supplies.
They would then have to live on reindeer meat,
and that would be hard on our herd. In fact,
we would soon have no herd. So that is the
reason we are going to spend a winter on the
tundra.”</p>
<p>“And will we live like this?” asked Patsy.</p>
<p>“Oh, no!” laughed Marian. “We have tents
for this time of year. In a month we will move
into the most interesting houses you ever saw.
We’ll reserve that as a surprise for you.”</p>
<p>“Oh! Oh!” sighed Patsy, as she suddenly
became conscious of the aches in her legs. “I
think it’s going to be grand, if only I get so I can
stand the travel as you do. Do you think I ever
will?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_26">[26]</div>
<p>“Of course you will—in less than a week.”</p>
<p>“You know,” said Patsy thoughtfully, “down
where I came from we think we exercise an
awful lot. We swim and row, ride horseback,
play tennis and basket-ball, and go on hikes.
But, after all, that was just play—sort of skipping
’round. This—this is the real thing!”</p>
<p>Giving her cousin an energetic good-night
hug, she closed her eyes and was soon fast
asleep.</p>
<p>Marian did not fall asleep at once. Her mind
was working over the mystery of the purple
flame. What was it? What had caused it?
Who were the persons back there in the old
dredge, and why had they come there? Such
were some of the problems that crowded her
mind.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_27">[27]</div>
<p>The old dredge had been there for years. It
was but one of the many monuments to men’s
folly in their greedy search for gold. These
monuments—dredges, derricks, sluice-boxes,
crushers, smelters, and who knows what others—lined
the beaches and rivers about Nome. The
bed of the Sinrock River was known to run
fairly rich in gold. Someone had imagined that
he might become rich by dredging the mud at
the bottom of the river and washing it for gold.
The scheme had failed. Doubtless the owner of
the dredge had gone into bankruptcy. At any
rate, here was the old dredge with its long beams
and gaping iron bucket still dangling in air,
rotting to decay. And here within this tomblike
wreck had appeared the purple flame.</p>
<p>It had not been like anything Marian had seen
before. “Almost like lightning,” she mused,
sleepily.</p>
<p>Being a healthy girl with a clean mind, she
did not long puzzle her brain about the uncanny
mystery of the weird light, but busied her mind
with more practical problems. If these makers
of the purple flame were to remain long at the
dredge, how were they to live? Too often in the
past, the answer to such a question had been,
“By secretly preying upon the nearest herd.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_28">[28]</div>
<p>The Sinrock herd had been moved some distance
away. Marian’s own herd was now the
nearest one to the old dredge. “And when we
move into winter quarters it will be five miles
nearer. Oh, well!” she sighed, “there’s no use
borrowing trouble. It’s probably some miners
going up the river to do assessment work.”</p>
<p>“But then,” her busy mind questioned, “what
about the purple flame? Why have they already
stayed there three weeks? Why—”</p>
<p>At this juncture she fell asleep, to awake when
the first streaks of dawn were casting fingers of
light across the snowy tundra.</p>
<p>She crept softly from her sleeping bag, jumped
into her clothes, and was in the act of lighting
the fire when a faint sound of heavy breathing
caused her to turn her head. To her surprise she
saw Patsy, clothed only in those garments that
had served as her sleeping gown, doing a
strange, whirling, bare-footed fling of calisthenics,
with the sleeping bag as her mat.</p>
<p>“You appear to have quite recovered,” Marian
laughed.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_29">[29]</div>
<p>“Just seeing if I was all here,” Patsy laughed
in turn, as she dropped down upon the bag and
began drawing on her stockings.</p>
<p>“Whew!” she puffed. “That’s invigorating;
good as a cold plunge in the sea. What do we
have for breakfast?”</p>
<p>“Sour-dough flapjacks and maple syrup.”</p>
<p>“Um-um! Make me ten,” exclaimed Patsy,
redoubling her efforts to get herself dressed.</p>
<p>That night Marian made a discovery that set
her nerves a-tremble to the very roots of her hair
and, in spite of the Arctic chill, brought beads
of perspiration out on the tip of her nose.</p>
<p>As on the previous night, they had camped
out upon the open tundra. This night, however,
they had found a sheltered spot beside a clump
of willows that lined a stream. The stream ran
between low, rolling hills. Over those hills they
had been passing when darkness fell. Now, as
Marian crept into the sleeping bag, she saw the
nearer hills rising like cathedral domes above
her. She heard the ceaseless rustle of willow
leaves that, caught by an early frost, still clung
to their branches. This rustle, together with the
faint breeze that fanned her cheeks, had all but
lulled her to sleep. Suddenly she sat upright.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_30">[30]</div>
<p>“It couldn’t be!” she exclaimed. Then, a
moment later, she added:</p>
<p>“But, yes—there it is again. Who would
believe it? Lightning in the Arctic, and on such
a night as this. Twenty below zero and clear
as a bell! Not a cloud in sight.”</p>
<p>Rubbing her brow to clear her mind from the
cobweb of dreams that had been forming there,
she stared again at the crest of the hill.</p>
<p>Then, swiftly, silently, that she might not
waken her cousin, she crept from the sleeping
bag. Donning her fur parka and drawing on
knickers and deerskin boots, she hurried away
from camp and up the hill, thinking as she
did so:</p>
<p>“That’s not lightning. I don’t know what it
is, but in the name of all that’s good, I’m going
to come nearer solving that mystery than ever I
did before.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_31">[31]</div>
<p>Half way up the hill she found a snow blown
gully, and up this she crept, half hidden by the
shadows. Nearing the crest, a half mile from
her camp, she dropped on hands and knees and
crawled forward a hundred yards. Then, like
some hunter who has stolen upon his game, she
propped herself on her elbows and stared straight
ahead.</p>
<p>In spite of her expectations, she gasped at
what she saw. A purple flame, now six inches
in length, now a foot, now two feet, darted out
of space, then receded, then flared up again.
Three feet above the surface of the snow, it
appeared to hang in midair like some ghost fire.</p>
<p>Marian’s heart beat wildly. Her nerves
tingled, her knees trembled, and open-mouthed,
without the power to move, she stared at this
strange apparition.</p>
<p>This spell lasted for a moment. Then, with a
half audible exclamation of disgust, she dropped
limply to the snow.</p>
<p>“Inside a tent,” she said. “Tent was so like
the snow and the sky that I couldn’t see it at
first.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_32">[32]</div>
<p>As her eyes became accustomed to this version
of her discovery she was able to make out the
outlines of the tent and even to recognize a dog
sleeping beside it.</p>
<p>Suddenly the shadow of a person began dancing
on the wall of the tent. So rapid were the
flashes of the purple flame, so flickering and
distorted was this image, that it seemed more
the shadow of a ghost than of a human being.
A second shadow joined the first. The two of
them appeared to do some wild dance. Then,
of a sudden, all was dark. The purple flame had
vanished.</p>
<p>A moment later a yellow light flared up. Then
a steady light gleamed.</p>
<p>“Lighted a candle,” was Marian’s comment.
“It’s on this side of them, for now they cast no
shadows. Are they all men? Or, are there
some women? How many are there? Two, or
more than two? They are following us. I’d
swear to that. I wonder why?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_33">[33]</div>
<p>Again she thought of the stories she had
heard of ne’er-do-wells who dogged the tracks
of reindeer herds like camp followers, and lived
upon the deer that had strayed too far from the
main herd.</p>
<p>“Perhaps,” Marian mused, “they have heard
that father’s herd is to be run this winter by
two inexperienced girls. Perhaps they think we
will be easy. Perhaps—” she set her lips tight,
“perhaps we will, and perhaps not. We shall
see.”</p>
<p>Then she went stealing back to her camp and
crept shivering into the sleeping bag.</p>
<p>She slept very little that night. The camp of
the mysterious strangers was too close; the perplexing
problems that lay before her too serious
to permit of that. She was glad enough when
she caught the first faint flush of dawn in the
east and knew that a new day was dawning.</p>
<p>“This day,” she told herself, “we make our
own camp. There is comfort in that. Let the
future take care of itself.”</p>
<p>She cast one glance toward the hill, but seeing
no movement there, she began to search the
ground for dry moss for kindling a fire.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_34">[34]</div>
<p>Soon she had a little yellow flame glowing in
her Yukon stove. The feeble flame soon grew
to a bright red, and in a little while the coffee
pot was singing its song of merry defiance to the
Arctic chill.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_35">[35]</div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />